Anti-abortion bills falter in Frankfort

FRANKFORT A series of anti-abortion bills led to a lively hearing Thursday, as one Northern Kentucky legislator held up an ultrasound of her grandson in an effort to urge the state to require women to see such pictures of their fetus.

In the end the House committee voted down three bills, two that would require a woman be shown a fetal ultrasound before having an abortion, and one that would require a face-to-face consultation with a medical professional.

Similar bills each year have failed to make it out of committee in the Democratic-controlled House.

The state has two abortion clinics, one in Lexington, the other in Louisville, and lawmakers said 3,500 abortions were performed statewide in 2013, down 400 from the previous year.

In a two-hour hearing Thursday, an unlikely alliance of Democrats and Republicans gave impassioned pleas urging the House of Representatives be allowed to vote on the bills.

"Though you may not agree with this bill, I would respectfully request that we bring this to the floor so the people of Kentucky have a chance through their elected representatives to voice their opinion," said Marjorie Montgomery, director of Kentucky Right to Life.

House Majority Whip Tommy Thompson, D-Owensboro, advocated for one of the two fetal ultrasound bills presented at the hearing.

"They don't have to look at the image, but have to be given the opportunity to look at it," said Thompson, pushing a bill that would require a fetal ultrasound. "I think this is a common sense approach to provide informed consent, to provide the information necessary to making a very important decision. In the end, not only does it protect a woman's privacy, but leaves the final choice to the woman."

That bill has 62 co-sponsors from both parties.

One fetal ultrasound bill and the face-to-face consultation bill passed the Republican-controlled Senate. The fetal ultrasound bill promoted by Thompson is a House bill.

Northern Kentucky attorney and prominent Democrat Mark Guilfoyle in 2000 successfully defended before a federal judge in Kentucky the state's "informed consent law" that requires women to receive information on fetal development and alternatives to abortion and then wait 24 hours before making a decision.

Guilfoyle on Thursday spoke before lawmakers in Frankfort to convince them to require face-to-face consultation.

Anti-abortion activists have tried to get the state to require face-to-face consultation since 2001, Guilfoyle said.

The committee voting down the bill didn't surprise him.

"It's such an important issue," Guilfoyle said. "You can never give up. You have to always keep fighting for what you think is right."

The state would risk millions of dollars in legal costs fighting court challenges should they pass the bills presented Thursday, said Derek Selznick, the Reproductive Freedom Project director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky.

"Regardless of how we feel, that is a lot of money for our state when we're looking at huge budget cuts," Selznick said.

That incurred the wrath of some lawmakers who grilled him on whether a fetus is an individual. Selznick said the ACLU advocates for humans, and when asked what unborn children were, he said they were humans. State Rep. Addia Wuchner, R-Burlington, displayed an ultrasound picture of her grandson, now 13, and asked him whether the doctor at the abortion clinic identifies the fetus as a patient.

"In that abortion clinic, does the doctor identify that there are two lives present?" Wuchner said.

Selznick said he couldn't answer that and that his personal opinion is not germane.

Many on the House Health and Welfare Committee weren't satisfied with the explanations by the bills' supporters.

Women already can ask for ultrasounds and other information before getting an abortion, Rep. Darryl Owens, D-Louisville, said.

"I'm always intrigued by position that we have to help these women," Owens said. "Women have the ability to see an ultrasound if they so choose and they also choose under this bill to avert their eyes if they want to. I know of no other medical procedure that we tell a doctor what he has to do next."